Featured: Ark of Secrets - Neolithic spirit alive in the Middle Ages

Ark of Secrets - Neolithic spirit alive in the Middle Ages

Rocks & Rows, Sailing Routes across the Atlantic and the Copper Trade

Rocks & Rows, Sailing Routes across the Atlantic and the Copper Trade

Who's Online

There are currently, 341 guests and 3 members online.

You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here

Sponsors

<< Text Pages >> Poggio Civitate - Ancient Village or Settlement in Italy in Toscana

Submitted by bat400 on Sunday, 10 November 2013  Page Views: 3587

Multi-periodSite Name: Poggio Civitate Alternative Name: Piano del Tesoro
Country: Italy
NOTE: This site is 18.153 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Toscana Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Siena  Nearest Village: Murlo
Latitude: 43.161000N  Longitude: 11.388000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

Internal Links:
External Links:

Ancient Settlement in Toscana.
An Etruscans settlement of large buildings and a multi-craft workshop in the 7th C BCE. After a large fire, the site was leveled and rebuilt in the 6th C BCE as multi winged complex with a central courtyard.

"Speculation as to its function has lead to such theories as a political meeting hall, a religious sanctuary, a palazzo of some type and even an Etruscan version of an agora. Currently, the excavators believe that the building combined the functions of the disparate structures of the earlier phase into a single edifice."

Currently the site of archaeological investigations as part of the Poggio Civitate Excavation Project, University Of Massachusetts Amherst .

Note: Infanticide in paradise? Neo-natal remains lead to speculation - infants in the trash, or burials displaced?
You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page. To see the most up to date information please register for a free account.


Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.

Nearby Images from Flickr
Murlo
Colli
Clouds
DSCF5941
Murlo 2
Murlo 3

The above images may not be of the site on this page, but were taken nearby. They are loaded from Flickr so please click on them for image credits.


Click here to see more info for this site

Nearby sites

Click here to view sites on an interactive map of the area

Key: Red: member's photo, Blue: 3rd party photo, Yellow: other image, Green: no photo - please go there and take one, Grey: site destroyed

Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)

To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.


Turn off the page maps and other distractions

Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 41.1km SSW 207° Roselle* Hillfort
 43.5km ESE 116° Civic Archaeological Museum* Museum
 45.1km SW 225° Tomba del Diavolino 2* Chambered Cairn
 47.6km SW 225° Vetulonia Mura dell' Arce* Ancient Village or Settlement
 59.3km SSE 160° Via Cava di Poggio Prisca* Ancient Trackway
 59.4km SSE 160° Ildebranda Tomb* Rock Cut Tomb
 59.8km SSE 160° Via cava di S. Sebastiano* Ancient Trackway
 59.9km SSE 160° Tomba della Sirena* Rock Cut Tomb
 60.0km SSE 159° Sovana Necropolis* Rock Cut Tomb
 60.9km SSE 151° Vitozza* Cave or Rock Shelter
 73.9km WSW 255° Populonia Necropolis* Rock Cut Tomb
 76.2km SE 130° Necropoli del Crocifisso del Tufo Rock Cut Tomb
 81.4km E 93° Perugia Arch* Stone Fort or Dun
 81.4km E 94° The Hypogeum of the Volumni* Rock Cut Tomb
 83.6km S 186° Cosa.* Hillfort
 85.2km N 5° Poggio Colla* Ancient Village or Settlement
 89.2km SSE 159° San Giulano Rock Cut tombs Rock Cut Tomb
 100.1km E 95° Assisi Ancient Village or Settlement
 102.2km SSE 153° Norchia Etruscan Necropolis* Rock Cut Tomb
 103.9km SE 136° Bomarzo Etruscan 'Pyramid' Altar* Ancient Temple
 105.7km E 100° Hispellum* Ancient Village or Settlement
 105.9km SSE 161° Tarquinia* Ancient Village or Settlement
 106.6km SE 141° Mount Cimino Votive Site* Ancient Temple
 107.3km WSW 245° Sassiritti Standing Stone (Menhir)
 109.9km SSE 152° Pian di Vescovo Rock Cut Tomb
View more nearby sites and additional images

<< Sa Cirra Nuraghe

Creag Aoil >>

Please add your thoughts on this site

The Archaeology of Death and Burial, Parker Pearson

The Archaeology of Death and Burial, Parker Pearson

Sponsors

Auto-Translation (Google)

Translate from English into:

"Poggio Civitate" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
Go back to top of page    Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Infanticide in paradise? by bat400 on Sunday, 10 November 2013
(User Info | Send a Message)
A recent paper presented at the January 2013 Archaeological Institute of America conference by Anthony Tuck of U Mass Amherst entitled “Evidence for treatment of perinatal deaths in Etruscan central Italy,” has caused something of a stir.

Poggio Civitate in Tuscany is a lavish Etruscan site dating back to 700 BCE and has been excavated over several decades. In 1971, a single fragment of infant humerus (arm bone) was found. Again, in 1983, two further fragments of humerus from an infant (or infants) who died around birth were recovered from the interior of the sites’ workshop. In 2009, another fragment of bone surfaced within the structure, this one a small part of the pelvis of a newborn.

The recent LiveScience headline, “Baby bones found scattered in ancient Italian village,” was predictable in getting across the idea that these bones had been haphazardly strewn across the floor, the implication being that the babies may also have been unwanted and cast aside. The evidence, includes:

An arm bone of a fetus or neonate found near a wall with other animal bones and debris in 1971.

Two neonate or infant arm bones found with animal bones in 1983.

One neonate ilium found in 2009.


Sensational journalistic reporting draws people to conclusions that are at best misleading and at worst factually incorrect.

There are three compelling reasons not to interpret these 4 small fragments as babies being thrown out with the rest of the rubbish as the implications suggest.

First: incidental human bones on an archaeological site is not unusual, especially if the occupation is over any length of time, such as at Poggio Civitate.

Second: the conclusions Anthony Tuck reaches are at the bounds of possibility; he is quoted in Live Science as saying the bones may have been simply “left on the floor of the workshop,” and then suggests that the babies were from people of low social status because of their placement in a workshop, further insinuating that the babies were the children of slaves. He concludes that the bone found in 1971 was “swept the debris up against the wall, not differentiating between baby bones and garbage.” A rather odd situation to have dead babies scattered across the floor, where a more likely scenario was an unrecognised bone that had long been disturbed from its primary location ending up with other bones without the individual even realising they were mixing human and animal bones.

Third: Why does burial within or near a workshop (if indeed these infants were buried in/near the place they were found, and this is not just secondary deposition) necessitate low status? Finding infant burials under walls, under living floors, or just outside houses or workshops is not unusual in ancient Italian cultures.

The reporting of infant burials is always problematic to a bioarchaeologist. The headlines always seem to imply the people of the past were unfeeling about infant mortality, that poorer people had no time to mourn. It’s a long-standing trope – that death was just something people put up with and they were hardened to its devastation – but anthropologically and historically, it’s not usually based in proven fact.

We like to tell ourselves that we’re better than our forebears, that we are more civilized than the Etruscans, Romans or Carthaginians, that somehow we have culturally evolved to do right by our biological progeny. But we do a disservice to the past by assuming a lack of emotion, and we do an even greater disservice when we over-interpret a very small amount of data to arrive at a conclusion that has many other less sensational options.



Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.pasthorizonspr.com
[ Reply to This ]

Your Name: Anonymous [ Register Now ]
Subject:


Add your comment or contribution to this page. Spam or offensive posts are deleted immediately, don't even bother

<<< What is five plus one as a number? (Please type the answer to this question in the little box on the left)
You can also embed videos and other things. For Youtube please copy and paste the 'embed code'.
For Google Street View please include Street View in the text.
Create a web link like this: <a href="https://www.megalithic.co.uk">This is a link</a>  

Allowed HTML is:
<p> <b> <i> <a> <img> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <tt> <li> <ol> <ul> <object> <param> <embed> <iframe>

We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.